Alabama's courts are severely threatened by underfunding

Judge Liles Burke, serves on the Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals and is the President of the Alabama Appellate Judges Association

By Judge Liles Burke, serves on the Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals and is the President of the Alabama Appellate Judges Association.

Alabama's court system is facing a dire financial crisis.

Forty-five years ago, Alabama courts faced a different kind of crisis. Up until then, Alabama's judiciary was a hodgepodge. The types of courts and rules of court varied from county to county. Records were haphazardly kept.

In some counties the judges had never even studied law. Even the rules that governed court procedures were often different in each county. Crime victims, small business owners, and individual citizens all felt the negative effects of Alabama's ancient and bureaucratic court system.

But in 1973, the people of Alabama went to the polls and approved a new article to the state's constitution that took our court system from one of the worst in the nation to one of the best. Gone were the mismatch of courts and rules, and in its place were a uniform structure of courts and uniform rules of court.

The changes the people of Alabama implemented in 1973 to streamline our judiciary have allowed Alabama to make many advancements in its court system. In recent years Alabama has been a leader in the move to electronic filing and the establishment of specialty courts such as drug courts and veterans' courts.

The innovations that Alabama has made are today in danger, and those same crime victims, small business owners and individual citizens are on the verge of being impacted again. Over the past decade, Alabama's courts have been woefully underfunded.

This year, the budget for the entire court system currently makes up less than one percent of the entire state budget.

The total appropriations for the trial and appellate courts have actually gone down for the past 8 years, with the 2016 budget being several million dollars less than it was even in 2009.

The only way that the judiciary has been able to operate within the monies prescribed for it is by eliminating personnel, increasing efficiencies through technology, and extraordinary efforts by court personnel.

Bailiffs who, among other duties, provide security during trials are essentially a thing of the past for many trial judges. Circuit clerks' staffs are a mere shadow of what they once were.

The staffing levels are so low for many circuit clerks that they have been forced to close their office to the public one day a week just to work on clearing the backlog without disruption. The staffs of the appellate courts, too, have been drastically cut. For example, the Court of Criminal Appeals (which hears every death penalty case in the State) has been forced to eliminate almost one third of its staff in the past decade. Our courts are now at a point where we have less than even the essential staff to maintain operations.

But eliminating staff and closing clerks' offices does nothing to reduce the workload and demands of the court system. Criminal trials, child custody proceedings, and disputes between businesses must be handled regardless of how many people are employed in a courthouse.

The right to a speedy trial in front of a jury of one's peers is a Constitutional right, not a line item in a budget. Under-funding the courts simply creates a backlog that will have to be dealt with at some point in the future.

The people of Alabama are the individuals most harmed when Courts are not adequately funded. Backlogs in criminal dockets mean that those charged with crimes sit in our county jails longer, meaning that the counties have to pay more for their incarceration. Crime victims and their families agonize longer waiting for justice to be served. Small businesses suffer when they cannot timely resolve open accounts and other business conflicts, thus stifling job creation. Children and their parents suffer when custody issues languish on backlogged dockets. The lives of the victims of domestic violence are at risk when they are turned away at the courthouse by a "CLOSED" sign when they attempt to obtain a protection from abuse order.

Innovations such as drug courts and veterans' courts provide tremendous cost savings to the taxpayers compared to incarceration.

On average it costs $44 per day to house an inmate in an Alabama prison, so every person who graduates from drug court instead of going to prison saves the state over $16,000 per year. Moreover, those who complete drug court are much less likely to return to criminal activity than those who are incarcerated. These programs, however, are not free. Inadequate funding for the judiciary will lead to the reduction and possible elimination of such programs.

The irony of all this is that Alabama's courts generate almost the entire amount that the legislature appropriates them with fees, fines, and other court costs.

According to a study by the Public Affairs Research Council of Alabama, the State's court system is putting as much money in to the State's general fund as it takes out of it. That means if the court budget is cut any further, Alabama's courts would be putting more money into the State general fund than they take out.

Article VI, Section 149 of Alabama's Constitution mandates that the courts be adequately funded, stating "Adequate and reasonable appropriations shall be made by the legislature for the entire unified judicial system..." Former Colorado Chief Justice Michael Bender has aptly noted, "No matter how capable our judges, they cannot be effective unless adequate resources are provided."

We are asking you, the citizens of Alabama, to champion the cause to ensure that the courts of this great state have the resources they need to provide the justice to which you are entitled. In 1973, the people of Alabama voted to bring a 19th century court system into the 20th century.

Today, we are not asking for help to maintain the status quo, but instead to make sure that the proper investment is made to take our 20th century court system into the 21st century. The voice of the people of Alabama in this endeavor is just as crucial today as it was forty-five years ago.